Hello sports fans,

I’ve been pretty slack with writing lately, but technically this is a tech-priest Tuesday, because I’m posting this on Tuesday, so I’ll take a win where I can get it.

I recently signed up for a middle earth strategy battle game tournament and need to paint 40ish models in the next 3 weeks, I also decided now was a great time to get back into Yu-Gi-Oh and commit to even more Warhammer 40k events – I’m pretty stressed. But if my only real stress in life is the crushing weight of having to paint toys by a certain date then I think I’m doing ok.

Anyway, on the 20-21st of June I attended the Victorian team championships for Warhammer 40k, an event that is less prestigious than it sounds. It would be my first time attending the event and I was once again rolling with the Gutierrez boyz.

So far this year, we had come in 2nd place at Squad games, and 4th at Strength in numbers. We were hoping for another podium, or at least the other boys were, and a nice finish to 10th edition.

I’m not sure how I feel about teams’ events. I think I could really enjoy the process of list building and matrix’s, figuring out the meta and creating some heinous roster or build. I’d probably be good at it, but I just don’t want to do it. I typed out and deleted a paragraph about hating ‘the competitive nature of Warhammer’ about 5 times, I should probably stop bitching aye.

I do enjoy the time I spend at Warhammer events. It’s like I told my co-workers – you need to be social, or you’ll die.

I was playing the Adeptus Mechanicus for this event. It was a pretty ‘good stuff’ Eradication Cohort list. I didn’t write it, my captain did. I’m incapable of writing a solid meta list, apparently. I really did struggle to play it, even though I had been playing a similar list in the same detachment for a while before, and I was familiar with the units in my list and their roles.

I think part of it is because I didn’t create the list, I didn’t think through any strategy, so it just felt like I was trying to out value my opponent instead of doing anything that resembles a real gameplan. My deployment was sloppy, my movement wasn’t fab, and overall, I always felt like I was getting in my own way with my movement and gameplay decisions. I also never play on WTC terrain. I’ll stop coping now, I think that’s enough.

Take me back to the November 2025 Dread Talons list, that thing basically played itself.

List – Eradication Cohort:

• Cawl
• Thulia
• Enginseer
• 2×10 Rangers
• 1×3 Ironstriders (Las)
• 1×9 Servitor Battleclade
• 2×5 Infiltrators
• 1×10 Infiltrators
• 1×5 Pteraxii Skystalkers
• Onager Dunecrawler (Erad beamer)
• 3x Disintegrator (Ferrumite)

I’m still shit at taking photos.

The Games

Round 1 – Matt’s CSM

Terraform, Cruicible of Battle

Matt’s List (Pactbound Zealots): Abaddon, 2x Defiler + Huron good stuff

Round 1 we were paired into the sushi team, and I got exactly what I was brought for, the defiler pairing.

I was confident to get at least a 10 into Defilers. I had enough cheapish trash to trade away for objective scoring and enough of a punch to kill the crabs.

Unfortunately for Matt his team put him on an awful board where I would be able to secure my primary unmolested by the Defilers, while also contesting Matt’s from an unmolestable position. There weren’t many places he could push his defilers safely while staying within 6″ of the big man.

I put out my Dunecrawler bait and Matt gobbled it up. Then I slightly whiffed and only killed a single crab, poo. I finished off the other in the next turn and had almost tabled Matt by this point, he made the error of keeping his Huron brick too far back when he really needed to full send it the same turn he poked 2 crabs out, a lesson learnt.

Matt was a joy to play, and his team is lovely. I hope we see them at events again.

The game ended 18-2 my way and the round 95-25 our way, pretty neat.

Round 2 – Leo’s World Eaters

Scorched Earth, Tipping Point

Leo’s List (Berzerker Warband): The exact same list you’ve seen for the past 3 years.

This one was a bit grim. I went into it overconfident having not lost to World Eaters a single time this edition, but after only having played 1 game with this list before, the previous one.

The board was a bit rough, and I deployed my Dunecrawler in a spot where it couldn’t really move without taking a big detour. I also failed to use my Infiltrators to screen the WE scouts, which was a bit silly.

I whiffed a little bit, and continued to not screen, eventually getting tabled by my turn 4, I think.

The game ended 0-20 to my opponent, F. But we drew the round a perfect 55-65 which was funny. Turned out, my score didn’t really matter in the end. Teams is funny, isn’t it?

Round 3 – Tom’s Space Marines

Linchpin, Tipping Point

Tom’s List (Ceramite Sentinels): 5 Desolate marines – the rest didn’t matter apparently.

After my early finish to Rd 2 I got on the beers, so by the time this game started I was a bit tipsy.

For round 3 we were up against Hawaii 0-5, great team name. I would be playing Tom’s Space Marines.

This was the strangest game. My opponent did not move a single unit into my board half until the bottom of 5 when he charged into Cawl just behind the middle objective to annihilate him with Calgar.

He just sat there each turn, menacingly, not really moving anything but picking off a single one of my units with Desolation Marines.

I think we finished with around an hour and 20 minutes left on the round timer – out of 3 hours – but I probably spent 20 minutes total playing the game on my turn.

Tom was great fun to play against though, and his howling griffons paint scheme was sick.

The game ended 16-4 my way, and the round 89-31 for us, cool.

Round 4 – K’yle’s T’au

Hidden Supplies, Search and Destroy

K’yle’s List (M’ont K’a): 3 Riptides – and you know the rest

This round we were paired into ‘Ponying up the cash makes you crabtain’ and I was paired into Kyle, someone who I had ‘played’ once before at strength in numbers. To be honest, there was no one on their team I really wanted to avoid. None of their lists were that bad of a match up for me, and I’ve spent time talking to them all before, they’re lovely.

I had played Rhys before at Squad games and went a bit overboard with my razzle dazzle giving him nightmares, and as I heard from Kyle, he wanted to avoid playing me. Little did he know, if we did get paired, I was planning on being very respectful and letting him play his best, while I played mine. I was playing serious Warhammer – for Luke. To be honest I was pretty chill the whole event, I think my days of battle-shocking my opponents are behind me. I’ll just battle-shock their models now.

I got to play a real game into Kyle, nice. I’d played against this list a bunch recently and knew the pitfalls to watch out for. I knew Kyle was a good player though, so I’d be working for every point.

I ended up going first which I think is fabulous, it lets you push out a bit against the T’au screens and forces them to be more conservative if they decide to have a go turn. Kyle stuck 2 Riptides out turn 1, and didn’t kill a single model.

In my turn 2 I killed 2 Riptides, 20 Pathfinders, a Piranha (in Overwatch lol), and a few Kroot. It was a bit cursed to be honest. Kyle still played an immaculate game while I didn’t really take the initiative enough. I was held to a 5 on primary each turn for the entire game while being in a dominant position, rip. There are definitely some better decisions I could have made.

However, I was able to hold Kyle to a 5 on primary in total. His secondaries also weren’t great only scoring 24 across the game while I scored 37.

In the end I managed a 15-5 my way, and our team won the round 77-43, not behd.

At this point we had 3 wins and a draw, if we won the final round, we were in a good position to win the event. Cool.

Round 5 – Michael’s Drukhari

Take and Hold, Search and Destroy

Michael’s List (Spectacle of Spite): Wyches and Bitches

Oh my god, I want to play Drukhari.

I thought I was over this, I really did. Even before we started playing as Michael was explaining his army all I could think was holy shit I wish this was me.

Every sentence he uttered ’23” potential movement’, ‘advance and charge’, ‘2cp charge you IN YOUR MOVEMENT PHASE’, sent shivers down my spine. Just thinking back on it now has me wanting to go and buy a Drukhari army today. Shit, I probably will. I wonder if Billy will buy his Orks back.

I honestly had no idea how this game was going to go. I had only played against Drukhari a couple of times this edition, and it was against a super casual dude at our LGS.

As we were deploying, I saw an opportunity to engage in some gatcha gameplay. I could deploy my Infiltrators in a way where if I went first, I would be able to aggressively yeet them out killing a big unit of Wyches with a succ, some bikes and wrapping a Raider (potentially), before Michael had a chance to get CP for counter charge etc.

I went to my captain and said hey, can I do a risky aggressive play that I really need to go first to pull off. He said, no, don’t take risks, we really need to win this round. Then I walked back to my table, and did it anyway, sorry Luke lol.

I was going second, fuck.

Thankfully, Michael didn’t punish me too hard, and I did screen my big infiltrator brick with a smaller infiltrator brick, so my real beef didn’t get beefed. It turns out this all came out in the wash anyway. Thanks to Drukhari’s incredibly mid leadership characteristic and the -2 to battle-shocks given out by the Infiltrators every time Michael charged them, his units ended up battle-shocked.

This meant he was never in a position to disrupt my movement or charges using his stratagem to charge in my movement phase, because every unit he sent forward to engagement ended up battle-shocked, lol.

I think I ended up playing around Michael’s tactics fairly well, and thanks to a couple of lucky overwatches by my, a sneaky rapid ingress of a Disintegrator which moved and shot down the line behind Michaels ruins to blow up a raider, and tank-shock a unit of wyches on an objective denying 5 primary, plus all my charges working and rolling hot on a few invulns, and Michael’s Scourges whiffing and then not having the movement to hide them properly from my tanks gun lines so they all died, I ended up getting a 16-4.

Unfortunately, I think my list was a pretty bad pairing for Michael’s. Everything he wanted to charge was a bad target anyway because of the Infiltrators battle-shock fight phase shenanigans, and everything else was a tank with a 2+ save.

It was an awesome game though; Michael’s great to play against. I had played him once before at the Risky Rollers open on his Orks. I wish I had the acumen he has in his decision making, but I’m pretty sure I have ADHD so that might not be possible. God I want to play Drukhari.

We ended up taking this round 76-44 which locked in first place for us.

Neat.

Aidan bought 100 raffle tickets using me as a vessel and didn’t win anything. Laurence tried to give me 100 loose raffle tickets instead of the entire book which was a weird play.

We got these cool rings too, but mine was too big and kept getting caught in my zipper, oh well.

Pretty good wrap up for 10th edition, looking forward to playing 11th.

Once again, the best part of any 40k event was spending time with my friends, especially Booth. We went out to dinner together on the Saturday night which was nice.

Thanks for reading, love you x